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Yep! Hosting a small bunch of close friends at my place, I brewed a 5 gal batch of belgian wit that is slated for tonight.

I would definitely vote on checking that thermometer. The recipe doesn't seem crazy to me either. 156 is a perfectly reasonable temperature and I regularly get beers mashed at that temperature down to 1.010 or less. If your thermometer was reading low and you actually mashed at 160+ I could...

Nothing fancy, but I just brewed 5 gal of a belgian wit that is slated for a New Years party. It's carbonating in the keg as we speak.

In general, yes. Glass scientific stir bars are designed to spin liquids on hot stir plates while mixing chemicals, so although the magnetization concern isn't crazy, the bars are designed for this purpose and as such, I imagine that the demagnetization temperatures would be much higher than...

If the crackling happens shortly before the boil I think this may be part of it. Often when heating liquid quickly, the bottom surface of the container will be hot enough to boil, but the whole volume of liquid is still too cold. When this happens, some of the bottom layer does boil but as soon...

+1 for yeast slurry. My carboys have some amount of that every time I pitch yeast without a funnel.

Oh man, your description followed my thought process perfectly. Sorry you broke your flask, but I'm glad I was able to experience this one through you.

Awesome, happy pouring!

Agree with everyone here that perlicks help a ton. I can go weeks without pouring a beer and the faucet won't stick. With your current faucet, you can spray the faucet with a spray bottle of starsan after your last beer of the night to help clean it out and remove most of the sticky sugars.

Your steak analogy is great! Hits the nail on the head.

I have never used an actual barrel myself, but I have a couple thoughts about this: As a homebrewer, you have the option to do something professional breweries can't: barrel age the beer, then add a small amount of whiskey after barrel aging. IMO this sounds less romantic, but gives you control...

The bucket seals often leak no matter how new they are. I just used a brand new bucket for a fermentation and never saw a single bubble through the airlock but had a perfectly fine fermentation.

Once your beer is carbonated, switching temps is a real pain, as the amount of co2 dissolved is highly dependent on temperature for any given pressure. For example, a beer carbonated at 33F and 10 psi might need something like 18 or 20 psi at 50 degrees. Every time you switch the temperature...

Dry hopped beers are often a little hazier, even commercially. Cold crashing the hops out of the fermenter isn't a bad idea, but once you prime and bottle you definitely want to keep them at 70 degrees. Any colder and the yeast will go dormant and won't actually carbonate your beer. If you...

Adding hops before the end of your fermentation won't kill the fermentation. The reason for dry hopping after active fermentation finishes is to keep all of the delicious aroma from being scrubbed out with the CO2. Your beer should be just fine.

Good point about the water, sounds like it's time to get a proper test. Does anybody have any recommendations on reasonably priced water testing?

I've been struggling with something similar myself and since I started kegging some batches, I notice that the flavor is definitely not present (or much less so) in my kegged beers. This was an issue both for my first few extract batches and the AG batches that followed. I can't put my finger...

Insulated on the outside should be fine. That's what I do. Tape the probe on and tape a layer or two of bubble wrap on top of the probe. Though I've never personally had a problem with it, I have heard that you should be careful using a heating belt on glass carboys because the thermal stress...

Though the FG does seem a little high, it wouldn't be shocking if it was done, especially if you are using less water. The unfermentables would end up more concentrated. I definitely suspect you've been using too much priming sugar. The sugar included will, when fermented, produce the same...

Definitely not too much space for primary. The co2 from fermentation pushes out any oxygen quickly and the headspace gives your krausen plenty of room to grow. RDWHAHB